A New Yorker Untangles Covent Garden's Soap Opera; A Mr. Fix-It Looks for Peace and Performances

By ALAN RIDING

Published: February 15, 1999

LONDON—
The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden is still a huge construction site, but completion of its $360 million redevelopment is now in view. Inside its horseshoe auditorium, while seats and carpets have yet to be installed, a large medallion of Queen Victoria's profile, placed above the proscenium 140 years ago, has already been regilded in anticipation of the house's reopening on Dec. 1.

Yet if London's arts lovers have barely noticed this pricey metamorphosis, it is because a far more exciting political, financial and psychological drama has been tearing apart the Royal Opera House. Until recently the issue has not been how the new Covent Garden will look but whether the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet will ever perform there.

Put bluntly, for the last three years the Royal Opera House has been a soap opera made for the tabloids. Under three board chairmen and three directors it saw its deficit mount, its mismanagement exposed and its public image muddied. Its plans for performances in other theaters during Covent Garden's current 30-month closing was so badly prepared that the board canceled most of the 1999-2000 season.

And there was more. Two departing directors exchanged barbs with the board. The artistic director for opera, Nicholas Payne, left to run the English National Opera. The music director, Bernard Haitink, resigned in frustration in October. In November artists and staff members picketed 10 Downing Street, while members of the Royal Ballet contemplated resigning en masse and forming a new ballet company. Who could stop the rot?

Enter an American in the form of Michael Kaiser, the former executive director of American Ballet Theater, who arrived here in mid-November to sort out the warring British. That was not quite the wording of his mandate as the Royal Opera House's new executive director, but that in essence was his task. And remarkably just 10 weeks later there are signs that peace is breaking out at Covent Garden.

In December the Arts Council of England, which provides about one-third of Covent Garden's budget, raised its annual grant by $3 million to $32 million for 1999 and by a further $6.4 million for 2000 and 2001 each. At the same time Mr. Haitink withdrew his resignation and agreements were signed with the opera house unions. The turmoil inside the Royal Ballet was also settled.

On Jan. 28 Mr. Kaiser unveiled his strategic plan for Covent Garden which, along with details of the opera and ballet programs through May 2000, included two innovations carefully designed to improve the house's public image: Ticket prices will be sharply reduced, and the building will be open all day for tours, meals and free lunchtime chamber music concerts in its new 420-seat Studio Theater.

Of course not all this was Mr. Kaiser's doing. Negotiations with the Arts Council were already under way, and it was well known that one condition for larger grants was a reduction in ticket prices. Yet with his reputation of having helped restore financial health to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the American Ballet Theater, Mr. Kaiser has been welcomed here like a doctor arriving at the scene of a crash.

Looking to the Future, Not the Past

''It does help to come from the outside,'' Mr. Kaiser, a 45-year-old New Yorker, said in an interview in his office opposite the opera house, ''because my experience of troubled organizations is that when you are in the midst of all the problems, everyone is focused on the past. Who caused the problem? How did we get into this mess? They point fingers at each other, the staff blames the board, the board blames the staff. And no one is saying, 'where do we go from here?' ''

With the announcement of his strategic plan, then, Mr. Kaiser said that he thought he has already turned the house's eyes from the past to the future. In an American ''can do'' way that always dazzles Britons, he has also promised that an array of outstanding problems will soon be resolved. Perhaps to the dismay of some here, he does not even consider Covent Garden's crisis to be that special.

''There was a lot of hurt here, and that's another thing in common with troubled organizations,'' he explained. ''People were feeling unloved, that they were not being treated properly, because when an organization is in trouble, typically the leadership begins cutting back on marketing and the creating of arts. The public and donors lose interest. You get less revenue, and you cut more marketing and arts, and you end up in deep trouble.''

Part of Mr. Kaiser's first aid program has involved making the artists -- the orchestra, the chorus and the dancers -- feel wanted again. He likes to remind them that he first studied to be an opera singer, that his grandfather played in the New York Philharmonic, and that he spent much of the 1990's with ballet companies. And he is intent on attending as many of their performances as possible.

''I want them to understand that I am in this field because I love the arts and I love artists, and I am there to support them.'' he said.

Mr. Kaiser is also trying to restore a more traditional relationship between the senior staff and the house's seven-member board.

''Typically, in times of trouble, the board gets involved in day-to-day activities, and this is what happened here,'' he noted. ''Now we have to train them, to get them to recognize that if this place is going to be successful, it has to be run by the staff and not by the board.''

With the London press, there are signs that Mr. Kaiser's open-door approach is bearing fruit. His two predecessors, Genista McIntosh and Mary Allen, who between them held the job for less than a year, were constantly on the defensive, which only encouraged the feeding frenzy of some newspapers. But again, being an outsider has helped Mr. Kaiser: since he does not know the old rules, he can play a new game.

His only disappointment so far is that the American director Francesca Zambello turned down an invitation to become the artistic director of the Royal Opera.

Last year after Mr. Kaiser's own appointment, Sarah Billinghurst, head of artistic planning at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, also refused the job, reportedly because she was rebuffed in her request to be named head of all Covent Garden. Now the search for a new artistic director for opera has resumed.

'You Just Have to Have An Exciting Project'

''The structure we anticipate is three people reporting to the board, myself, Sir Anthony Dowell as artistic director of the Royal Ballet and the artistic director of the Royal Opera,'' Mr. Kaiser explained. ''I have a great deal of experience of working with partners, and it works fine because I believe art comes first. If I believed the balance sheet was the most important thing, then I think we'd be in trouble.''

Still, the balance sheet is his problem, and no small one at that. Work continues on Covent Garden's expansion, which includes enlarging the backstage, raising the fly tower and adding two large annexes comprising offices, rehearsal rooms and the Studio Theater as well as a reception area in the so-called Floral Hall. But the Royal Opera House has not yet covered the project's $360 million final cost.

It has received a $125 million grant from National Lottery profits, it has borrowed some $70 million against future rentals of street-level shop space in its new annexes, and it has raised $130 million in private donations. But it still needs a further $32 million. The house's anticipated deficit in March 2000 is another $32 million.

But Mr. Kaiser likes fund-raising, which ''is unusual for an arts executive in Britain,'' he said. He seems quite unfazed by all the warnings he has heard that, unlike wealthy Americans, prosperous Britons have no tradition of donating money to the arts.

He also waves away the caution that Britain's tax system does not offer the same tax breaks for private contributions to culture as those available in the United States.

''There is money out there and people are willing to give it,'' he said. ''You just have to have an exciting project to attract.''

Fund-raising experience, though, certainly helps. For example, each of the 16,000 Friends of Covent Garden now pay just $70 a year for the privilege of attending lectures and some rehearsals.

Mr. Kaiser said he planned to introduce ''a ladder of giving,'' common in the United States, to squeeze more money out of the friends. And with private or corporate donors, he said, there is usually a need that can be satisfied.

''Some want corporate entertaining opportunities,'' he said. ''They may want a product or service to be associated with something of high quality. They may want marketing visibility.''

Mr. Kaiser has found an unusual way of tapping corporate funds by charging higher ticket prices for performances Monday through Thursday, ''when our corporate donors do their entertaining.'' On Fridays and Saturday top ticket prices will fall to $136 from $160 for opera and to $80 from $96 for ballet. Half the 2,300 seats in the house for every performance will also be available at less than half the top price.

But when Covent Garden reopens in December with a gala evening of opera and ballet followed by a new production of Verdi's ''Falstaff,'' its money problems will not be over.

Moving Ahead Freely In 3 or 5 Years

Mr. Kaiser is planning a full 2001-02 season, but until then, instead of working from September through July, the Royal Opera House will suspend its productions at the end of May and rent out the theater to touring companies (like the Kirov Opera and Ballet in the summer of 2000).

Still, Mr. Kaiser seems confident of being able to live up to his nickname in the British press, Mr. Turnaround, predicting that Covent Garden's deficit will no longer be a problem by early 2000, and that within three to five years the house will be operating without financial restraints.

Certainly the challenge is there, spelled out in a newspaper headline on his first day at work, ''Chaos Reigns as Kaiser Enters Opera House.''

He beamed with delight. ''That was my welcome,'' he said.

Photos: Renovations at the Royal Opera House in London, above; its executive director, Michael Kaiser, right. (Photographs by Jonathan Player for The New York Times)